Chapter 3:
General Political
Considerations Based on My
Vienna Period
Today it is my conviction that in general, aside from cases of
unusual talent, a man should not engage in public political
activity before his thirtieth year. He should not do so, because up
to this time, as a rule, he is engaged in molding a general
platform, on the basis of which he proceeds to examine the
various political problems and finally establishes his own
position on them. Only after he has acquired such a basic
philosophy, and the resultant firmness of outlook on the special
problems of the day, is he, inwardly at least, mature enough to be
justified in partaking in the political leadership of the general
public.
Otherwise he runs the risk of either having to change his former
position on essential questions, or, contrary to his better
knowledge and understanding, of clinging to a view which
reason and conviction have long since discarded. In the former
case this is most embarrassing to him personally, since, what
with his own vacillations, he cannot justifiably expect the faith of
his adherents to follow him with the same unswerving firmness
as before; for those led by him, on the other hand, such a reversal
on the part of the leader means perplexity and not rarely a certain
feeling of shame toward those whom they hitherto opposed. In
the second case, there occurs a thing which, particularly today,
often confronts us: in the same measure as the leader ceases to
believe in what he says, his arguments become shallow and flat,
but he tries to make up for it by vileness in his choice of means.
While he himself has given up all idea of fighting seriously for
his political revelations (a man does not die for something which
he himself does not believe in), his demands on his supporters
become correspondingly greater and more shameless until he
ends up by sacrificing the last shred of leadership and turning
into a 'politician; in other words, the kind of man whose onlv real
conviction is lack of conviction, combined with offensive
impertinence and an art of lying, often developed to the point of
complete shamelessness.
If to the misfortune of decent people such a character gets into a
parliament, we may as well realize at once that the essence of his
politics will from now on consist in nothing but an heroic
struggle for the permanent possession of his feedingbottle for
himself and his family. The more his wife and children depend
on it, the more tenaciously he will fight for his mandate. This
alone will make every other man with political instincts his
personal enemy; in every new movement he will scent the
possible beginning of his end, and in every man of any greatness
the danger which menaces him through that man.
I shall have more to say about this type of parliamentary bedbug.
Even a man of thirty will have much to learn in the course of his
life, but this will only be to supplement and fill in the framework
provided him by the philosophy he has basically adopted When
he learns, his learning will not have to be a revision of principle,
but a supplementary study, and his supporters will not have to
choke down the oppressive feeling that they have hitherto been
falsely instructed by him. On the contrary: the visible organic
growth of the leader will give them satisfaction, for when he
learns, he will only be deepening their own philosophy. And this
in their eyes will be a proof for the correctness of the views they
have hitherto held.
A leader who must depart from the platform of his general
philosophy as such, because he recognizes it to be false, behaves
with decency only if, in recognizing the error of his previous
insight, he is prepared to draw the ultimate consequence. In such
a case he must, at the very least, renounce the public exercise of
any further political activity. For since in matters of basic
knowledge he has once succumbed to an error, there is a
possibility that this will happen a second time. And in no event
does he retain the right to continue claiming, not to mention
demanding, the confidence of his fellow citizens.
How little regard is taken of such decency today is attested by the
general degeneracy of the rabble which contemporaneously feel
justified in 'going into' politics.
Hardly a one of them is fit for it.
I had carefully avoided any public appearance, though I think
that I studied politics more closely than many other men. Only in
the smallest groups did I speak of the things which inwardly
moved or attracted me. This speaking in the narrowest circles
had many good points: I learned to orate less, but to know people
with their opinions and objections that were often so boundlessly
primitive. And I trained myself, without losing the time and
occasion for the continuance of my own education. It is certain
that nowhere else in Germany was the opportunity for this so
favorable as in Vienna.
General political thinking in the old Danubian monarchy was just
then broader and more comprehensive in scope than in old
Germany, excluding parts of Prussia, Hamburg, and the North
Sea coast, at the same period. In this case, to be sure, I
understand, under the designation of 'Austria,' that section of the
great Habsburg Empire which, in consequence of its German
settlement, not only was the historic cause of the very formation
of this state, but whose population, moreover, exclusively
demonstrated that power which for so many centuries was able to
give this structure, so artificial in the political sense, its inner
cultural life. As time progressed, the existence and future of this
state came to depend more and more on the preservation of this
nuclear cell of the Empire.
If the old hereditary territories were the heart of the Empire
continually driving fresh blood into the circulatory stream of
political and cultural life, Vienna was the brain and will in one
Its mere outward appearance justified one in attributing to this
city the power to reign as a unifying queen amid such a
conglomeration of peoples, thus by the radiance of her own
beauty causing us to forget the ugly symptoms of old age in the
structure as a whole.
The Empire might quiver and quake beneath the bloody battles of
the different nationalities, yet foreigners, and especially
Germans, saw only the charming countenance of this city. Wblt
made the deception all the greater was that Vienna at that time
seemed engaged in what was perhaps its last and greatest visible
revival. Under the rule of a truly gifted mayor, the venerable
residence of the Emperors of the old regime awoke once more to
a :niraculous youth. The last great German to be born in the
ranks of the people who had colonized the Ostmark was not
officially numbered among socalled Statesmen'; but as mayor of
Vienna, this capital and imperial residence,' Dr. Lueger conjured
up one amazing achievement after another in, we may say, every
field of economic and cultural municipal politics, thereby
strengthening the heart of the whole Empire, and indirectly
becoming a statesman greater than all the socalled 'diplomats' of
the time If the conglomeration of nations called 'Austria'
nevertheless perished in the end, this does not detract in the least
from the political ability of the Germans in the old Ostmark, but
was the necessary result of the impossibility of permanently
maintaining a state of fifty million people of different
nationalities by means of ten million people, unless certain
definite prerequisites were established in time.
The ideas of the GermanAustrian were more than grandiose.
He had always been accustomed to living in a great empire and
had never lost his feeling for the tasks bound up with it. He was
the only one in this state who, beyond the narrow boundaries of
the crown lands, still saw the boundaries of the Reich; indeed,
when Fate finally parted him from the common fatherland, he
kept on striving to master the gigantic task and preserve for the
German people what his fathers had once wrested from the East
in endless struggles. In this connection it should be borne in mind
that this had to be done with divided energy; for the heart and
memory of the best never ceased to feel for the common mother
country, and only a remnant was left for the homeland.
The general horizon of the GermanAustrian was in itself
comparatively broad. His economic connections frequently
embraced almost the entire multiform Empire. Nearly all the big
business enterprises were in his hands; the directing personnel,
both technicians and officials, were in large part provided by
him. He was also in charge of foreign trade in so far as the Jews
had not laid their hands on this domain, which they have always
seized for their own. Politically, he alone held the state together.
Military service alone cast him far beyond the narrow boundaries
of his homeland. The GermanAustrian recruit might join a
German regiment, but the regiment itself might equally well be
in Herzegovina, Vienna, or Galicia. The officers' corps was still
German, the higher officials predominantly so. Finally, art and
science were German. Aside from the trash of the more modern
artistic development, which a nation of Negroes might just as
well have produced, the German alone possessed and
disseminated a truly artistic attitude. In music, architecture,
sculpture, and painting, Vienna was the source supplying the
entire dual monarchy in inexhaustible abundance, without ever
seeming to go dry itself.
Finally, the Germans directed the entire foreign policy if we
disregard a small number of Hungarians.
And yet any attempt to preserve this Empire was in vain, for the
most essential premise was lacking.
For the Austrian state of nationalities there was only one
possibility of overcoming the centrifugal forces of the individual
nations. Either the state was centrally governed hence internally
organized along the same lines. or it was altogether
inconceivable.
At various lucid moments this insight dawned on the ' supreme '
authority. But as a rule it was soon forgotten or shelved as
difficult of execution. Any thought of a more federative
organization of the Empire was doomed to failure owing to the
lack of a strong political germcell of outstanding power. Added
to this were the internal conditions of the Austrian state which
differed essentially from the German Empire of Bismarck. In
Germany it was only a question of overcoming political
conditions, since there was always a common cultural
foundation. Above all, the Reich, aside from little foreign
splinters, embraced members of only one people.
In Austria the opposite was the case.
Here the individual provinces, aside from Hungary, lacked any
political memory of their own greatness, or it had been erased by
the sponge of time, or at least blurred and obscured. In the period
when the principle of nationalities was developing, however,
national forces rose up in the various provinces, and to
counteract them was all the more difficult as on the rim of the
monarchy national states began to form whose populations,
racially equivalent or related to the Austrian national splinters,
were now able to exert a greater power of attraction than,
conversely, remained possible for the GermanAustrian.
Even Vienna could not forever endure this struggle.
With the development of Budapest into a big city, she had for the
first time a rival whose task was no longer to hold the entire
monarchy together, but rather to strengthen a part of it. In a short
time Prague was to follow her example, then Lemberg, Laibach,
etc. With the rise of these former provincial cities to national
capitals of individual provinces, centers formed for more or less
independent cultural life in these provinces. And only then did
the politiconational instincts obtain their spiritual foundation
and depth. The time inevitably approached when these dynamic
forces of the individual peoples would grow sponger than the
force of common interests, and that would be the end of Austria.
Since the death of Joseph II the course of this development was
clearly discernible. Its rapidity depended on a series of factors
which in part lay in the monarchy itself and in part were the
result of the Empire's momentary position on foreign policy.
If the fighf for the preservation of this state was to be taken up
and carried on in earnest, only a ruthless and persistent policy of
centralization could lead to the goal. First of all, the purely
formal cohesion had to be emphasized by the establishment in
principle of a uniform official language, and the administration
had to be given the technical implement without which a unified
state simply cannot exist. Likewise a unified stateconsciousness
could only be bred for any length of time by schools and
education. This was not feasible in ten or twenty years; it was
inevitably a matter of centuries; for in all questions of
colonization, persistence assumes greater importance than the
energy of the moment.
It goes without saying that the administration as well as the
political direction must be conducted with strict uniforrnity. To
me it was infinitely instructive to ascertain why this did not
occur,. or rather, why it was not done.l He who was guilty of this
omission was alone to blame for the collapse of the Empire.
Old Austria more than any other state depended on the greatness
of her leaders. The foundation was lacking for a national state,
which in its national basis always possesses the power of
survival, regardless how deficient the leadership as such may be.
A homogeneous national state can, by virtue of the natural inertia
of its inhabitants, and the resulting power of resistance,
sometimes withstand astonishingly long periods of the worst
administration or leadership without inwardly disintegrating. At
such times it often seems as though there were no more life in
such a body, as though it were dead and done for, but one fine
day the supposed corpse suddenly rises and gives the rest of
humanity astonishing indications of its unquenchable vital force.
It is different, however, with an empire not consisting of similar
peoples, which is held together not by common blood but by a
common fist. In this case the weakness of leadership will not
cause a hibernation of the state, but an awakening of all the
individual instincts which are present in the blood, but carmot
develop in times when there is a dominant will. Only by a
common education extending over centuries, by common
tradition, common interests, etc., can this danger be attenuated.
Hence the younger such state formations are, the more they
depend on the greatness of leadership, and if they are the work of
outstanding soldiers and spiritual heroes, they often crumble
immediately after the death of the great solitary founder. But
even after centuries these dangers cannot be regarded as
overcome; they only lie dormant, often suddenly to awaken as
soon as the weakness of the common leadership and the force of
education and all the sublime traditions can no longer overcome
the impetus of the vital urge of the individual tribes.
Not to have understood this is perhaps the tragic guilt of the
House of Habsburg.
For only a single one of them did Fate once again raise high the
torch over the future of his country, then it was extinguished for
ever.
Joseph IIX Roman Emperor of the German nation, saw with fear
and trepidation how his House, forced to the outermost corner of
the Empire, would one day inevitably vanish in the maelstrom of
a Babylon of nations unless at the eleventh hour the omissions of
his forefathers were made good. With superhuman power this
'friend of man' braced himself against the negligence of his
ancestors and endeavored to retrieve in one decade what
centuries had failed to do. If he had been granted only forty years
for his work, and if after him even two generations had continued
his work as he began it, the miracle would probably have been
achieved. But when, after scarcely ten years on the thrones worn
in body and soul, he died, his work sank with him into the grave,
to awaken no more and sleep forever in the Capuchin crypt. His
successors were equal to the task neither in mind nor in will.
When the first revolutionary lightnings of a new era flashed
through Europe, Austria, too, slowly began to catch fire, little by
little. But when the fire at length broke out, the flame was fanned
less by social or general political causes than by dynamic forces
of national origin.
The revolution of 1848 may have been a class struggle
everywhere, but in Austria it was the beginning of a new racial
war. By forgetting or not recognizing this origin and putting
themselves in the service of the revolutionary uprising, the
Germans sealed their own fate. They helped to arouse the spirit
of 'Western democracy,' which in a short time removed the
foundations of their own existence.
With the formation of a parliamentary representative body
without the previous establishment and crystallization of a
common state language, the cornerstone had been laid for the end
of German domination of the monarchy.' From this moment on
the state itself was lost. All that followed was merely the historic
liquidation of an empire.
To follow this process of dissolution was as heartrending as it
was instructive. This execution of an historical sentence was
carried out in detail in thousands and thousands of forrns. The
fact that a large part of the people moved blindly through the
manifestations of decay showed only that the gods had willed
Austria's destruction.
I shall not lose myself in details on this point, for that is not the
function of this book. I shall only submit to a more
thoroughgoing observation those events which are the
everunchanging causes of the decline of nations and states, thus
possessing significance for our time as well, and which
ultimately contributed to securing the foundations of my own
political thinking.
At the head of those institutions which could most clearly have
revealed the erosion of the Austrian monarchy, even to a
shopkeeper not otherwise gifted with sharp eyes, was one which
ought to have had the greatest strength parliament, or, as it was
called in Austria, the Reichsrat.
Obviously the example of this body had been taken from
England, the land of classical 'democracy.' From there the whole
blissful institution was taken and transferred as unchanged as
possible to Vienna.
The English twochamber system was solemnly resurrected in
the Abgeordnetenhaus and the Herrenhaus. Except that the
houses' themselves were somewhat different. When Barry raised
his parliament buildings from the waters of the Thames, he thrust
into the history of the British Empire and from it took the
decorations for the twelve hundred niches, consoles, and pillars
of his magnificent edifice. Thus, in their sculpture and painting,
the House of Lords and the House of Commons became the
nation's Hall of Fame.
This was where the first difficulty came in for Vienna. For when
Hansen, the Danish builder, had completed the last pinnacle on
the marble building of the new parliament, there was nothing he
could use as decoration except borrowings from antiquity.
Roman and &reek statesmen and philosophers now embellish
this opera house of Western democracy, and in symbolic irony
the quadrigae fiy from one another in all four directions above
the two houses, in this way giving the best external expres sion
of the activities that went on inside the building.
The 'nationalities' had vetoed the glorification of Austrian history
in this work as an insult and provocation, just as in the Reich
itself it was only beneath the thunder of World War battles that
they dared to dedicate Wallot's Reichstag Building to the German
people by an inscription.
When, not yet twenty years old, I set foot for the first time in the
magnificent building on the Franzensring to attend a session of
the House of Deputies as a spectator and listener, I was seized
with the most conflicting sentiments.
I had always hated parliament, but not as an institution in itself.
On the contrary, as a freedomloving man I could not even
conceive of any other possibility of government, for the idea of
any sort of dictatorship would, in view of my attitude toward the
House of Habsburg, have seemed to me a crime against freedom
and all reason.
What contributed no little to this was that as a young man, in
consequence of my extensive newspaper reading, I had, without
myself realizing it, been inoculated with a certain admiration for
the British Parliament, of which I was not easily able to rid
myself. The dignity with which the Lower House there fulfilled
its tasks (as was so touchingly described in our press) impressed
me immensely. Could a people have any more exalted form of
selfgovernment?
But for this very reason I was an enemy of the Austrian
parliament. I considered its whole mode of conduct unworthy of
the great example. To this the following was now added:
The fate of the Germans in the Austrian state was dependent on
their position in the Reichsrat. Up to the introduction of universal
and secret suffrage, the Germans had had a majority, though an
insignificant one, in parliament. Even this condition was
precarious, for the Social Democrats, with their unreliable
attitude in national questions, always turned against German
interests in critical matters affecting the Germansin order not to
alienate the members of the various foreign nationalities. Even in
those days the Social Democracy could not be regarded as a
German party. And with the introduction of universal suffrage
the German superiority ceased even in a purely numerical sense.
There was no longer any obstacle in the path of the further de
Germanization of the state.
For this reason my instinct of national selfpreservation caused
me even in those days to have little love for a representative body
in which the Germans were always misrepresented rather than
represented. Yet these were deficiencies which, like so many
others, were attributable, not to the thing in itself, but to the
Austrian state. I still believed that if a German majority were
restored in the representative bodies, there would no longer be
any reason for a principled opposition to them, that is, as long as
the old state continued to exist at all.
These were my inner sentiments when for the first time I set foot
in these halls as hallowed as they were disputed. For me, to be
sure, they were hallowed only by the lofty beauty of the
magnificent building. A Hellenic miracle on German soil!
How soon was I to grow indignant when I saw the lamentable
comedy that unfolded beneath my eyes!
Present were a few hundred of these popular representatives who
had to take a position on a question of most vital economic
importance.
The very first day was enough to stimulate me to thought for
weeks on end.
The intellectual content of what these men said was on a really
depressing level, in so far as you could understand their babbling
at all; for several of the gentlemen did not speak German, but
their native Slavic languages or rather dialects. I now had
occasion to hear with my own ears what previously I had known
only from reading the newspapers. A wild gesticulating mass
screaming all at once in every different key, presided over by a
goodnatured old uncle who was striving in the sweat of his brow
to revive the dignity of the House by violently ringing his bell
and alternating gentle reproofs with grave admonitions.
I couldn't help laughing.
A few weeks later I was in the House again. The picture was
changed beyond recognition. The hall was absolutely empty.
Down below everybody was asleep. A few deputies were in their
places, yawning at one another; one was 'speaking.' A
vicepresident of the House was present, looking into the hall with
obvious boredom.
The first misgivings arose in me. From now on, whenever time
offered me the slightest opportunity, I went back and, with
silence and attention, viewed whatever picture presented itself,
listened to the speeches in so far as they were intelligible, studied
the more or less intelligent faces of the elect of the peoples of
this woebegone stateand little by little formed my own ideas.
A year of this tranquil observation sufficed totally to change or
eliminate my former view of the nature of this institution. My
innermost position was no longer against the misshapen form
which this idea assumed in Austria; no, by now I could no longer
accept the parliament as such. Up till then I had seen the
misfortune of the Austrian parliament in the absence of a German
majority; now I saw that its ruination lay in the whole nature and
essence of the institution as such.
A whole series of questions rose up in me.
I began to make myself familiar with the democratic principle of
majority rule as the foundation of this whole institution, but
devoted no less attention to the intellectual and moral values of
these gentlemen, supposedly the elect of the nations, who were
expected to serve this purpose.
Thus I came to know the institution and its representatives at
once.
In the course of a few years, my knowledge and insight shaped a
plastic model of that most dignified phenomenon of modern
times: the parliamentarian. He began to impress himself upon me
in a form which has never since been subjected to any essential
change.
Here again the visual instruction of practical reality had
prevented me from being stifled by a theory which at first sight
seemed seductive to so many, but which none the less must be
counted among the symptoms of human degeneration.
The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism
which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world
plague with the culture in which its germs can spread. In its most
extreme forrn, parliamentarianism created a 'monstrosity of
excrement and fire,' in which, however, sad to say, the 'fire'
seems to me at the moment to be burned out.
I must be more than thankful to Fate for laying this question
before me while I was in Vienna, for I fear that in Germany at
that time I would have found the answer too easily. For if I had
first encountered this absurd institution known as 'parliament' in
Berlin, I might have fallen into the opposite fallacy, and not
without seemingly good cause have sided with those who saw the
salvation of the people and the Reich exclusively in furthering
the power of the imperial idea, and who nevertheless were alien
and blind at once to the times and the people involved.
In Austria this was impossible.
Here it was not so easy to go from one mistake to the other. If
parliament was worthless, the Habsburgs were even more
worthlessin no event, less so. To reject 'parliamentarianism' was
not enough, for the question still remained open: what then? The
rejection and abolition of the Reichsrat would have left the
House of Habsburg the sole governing force, a thought which,
especially for me, was utterly intolerable.
The difficulty of this special case led me to a more thorough
contemplation of the problem as such than would otherwise have
been likely at such tender years.
What gave me most food for thought was the obvious absence of
any responsibility in a single person.
The parliament arrives at some decision whose consequences
may be ever so ruinousnobody bears any responsibility for this,
no one can be taken to account. For can it be called an
acceptance of responsibility if, after an unparalleled catastrophe,
the guilty government resigns? Or if the coalition changes, or
even if parliament is itself dissolved?
Can a fluctuating majority of people ever be made responsible in
any case?
Isn't the very idea of responsibility bound up with the individual?
But can an individual directing a government be made practically
responsible for actions whose preparation and execution must be
set exclusively to the account of the will and inclination of a
multitude of men?
Or will not the task of a leading statesman be seen, not in the
birth of a creative idea or plan as such, but rather in the art of
making the brilliance of his projects intelligible to a herd of
sheep and blockheads, and subsequently begging for their kind
approval?
Is it the criterion of the statesman that he should possess the art
of persuasion in as high degree as that of political intelligence in
formulating great policies or decisions? Is the incapacity of a
leader shown by the fact that he does not succeed in winning for
a certain idea the majority of a mob thrown together by more or
less savory accidents?
Indeed, has this mob ever understood an idea before success
proclaimed its greatness?
Isn't every deed of genius in this world a visible protest of genius
against the inertia of the mass?
And what should the statesman do, who does not succeed in
gaining the favor of this mob for his plans by flattery?
Should he buy it?
Or, in view of the stupidity of his fellow citizens, should he
renounce the execution of the tasks which he has recognized to
be vital necessities? Should he resign or should he remain at his
post?
In such a case, doesn't a man of true character find himself in a
hopeless conflict between knowledge and decency, or rather
honest conviction?
Where is the dividing line between his duty toward the general
public and his duty toward his personal honor?
Mustn't every true leader refuse to be thus degraded to the level
of a political gangster?
And, conversely, mustn't every gangster feel that he is cut out for
politics, since it is never he, but some intangible mob, which has
to bear the ultimate responsibility?
Mustn't our principle of parliamentary majorities lead to the
demolition of any idea of leadership?
Does anyone believe that the progress of this world springs from
the mind of majoritiesand not from the brains of individuals?
Or does anyone expect that the future will be able to dispense
with this premise of human culture?
Does it not, on the contrary, today seem more indispensable than
ever?
By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by
the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary
principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic
principle of Nature, though it must be said that this view is not
necessarily embodied in the presentday decadence of our upper
ten thousand.
The devastation caused by this institution of modern
parliamentary rule is hard for the reader of Jewish newspapers to
imagine, unless he has learned to think and examine
independently. It is, first and foremost, the cause of the
incredible inundation of all political life with the most inferior,
and I mean the most inferior, characters of our time. Just as the
true leader will withdraw from all political activity which does
not consist primarily in creative achievement and work, but in
bargaining and haggling for the favor of the majority, in the same
measure this activity will suit the small mind and consequently
attract it.
The more dwarfish one of these presentday leathermerchants is
in spirit and ability, the more clearly his own insight makes him
aware of the lamentable figure he actually cutsthat much more
will he sing the praises of a system which does not demand of
him the power and genius of a giant, but is satisfied with the
craftiness of a village mayor, preferring in fact this kind of
wisdom to that of a Pericles. And this kind doesn't have to
torment himself with responsibility for his actions. He is entirely
removed from such worry, for he well knows that, regardless
what the result of his 'statesmanlike' bungling may be, his end
has long been written in the stars: one day he will have to cede
his place to another equally great mind, for it is one of the
characteristics of this decadent system that the number of great
statesmen increases in proportion as the stature of the individual
decreases With increasing dependence on parliamentary
majorities it will inevitably continue to shrink, since on the one
hand great minds will refuse to be the stooges of idiotic
incompetents and bigmouths, and on the other, conversely, the
representatives of the majority, hence of stupidity, hate nothing
more passionately than a superior mind.
For such an assembly of wise men of Gotham, it is always a
consolation to know that they are headed by a leader whose
intelligence is at the level of those present: this will give each
one the pleasure of shining from time to timeand, above all, if
Tom can be master, what is to prevent Dick and Harry from
having their turn too?
This invention of democracy is most intimately related to a
quality which in recent times has grown to be a real disgrace, to
wit, the cowardice of a great part of our socalled 'leadership.
What luck to be able to hide behind the skirts of a socalled
majority in all decisions of any real importance!
Take a look at one of these political bandits. How anxiously he
begs the approval of the majority for every measure, to assure
himself of the necessary accomplices, so he can unload the
responsibility at any time. And this is one of the main reasons
why this type of political activity is always repulsive and hateful
to any man who is decent at heart and hence courageous, while it
attracts all low charactersand anyone who is unwilling to take
personal responsibility for his acts, but seeks a shield, is a
cowardly scoundrel. When the leaders of a nation consist of such
vile creatures, the results will soon be deplorable. Such a nation
will be unable to muster the courage for any determined act; it
will prefer to accept any dishonor, even the most shameful, rather
than rise to a decision; for there is no one who is prepared of his
own accord to pledge his person and his head for the execution of
a dauntless resolve.
For there is one thing which we must never forget: in this, too,
the majority can never replace the man. It is not only a
representative of stupidity, but of cowardice as well. And no
more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an
heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards.
The less the responsibility of the individual leader, the more
numerous will be those who, despite their most insignificant
stature, feel called upon to put their immortal forces in the
service of the nation. Indeed, they will be unable to await their
turn; they stand in a long line, and with pain and regret count the
number of those waiting ahead of them, calculating almost the
precise hour at which, in all probability, their turn will come.
Consequently, they long for any change in the office hovering
before their eyes, and are thankful for any scandal which thins
out the ranks ahead of them. And if some man is unwilling to
move from the post he holds, this in their eyes is practically a
breach of a holy pact of solidarity. They grow vindictive, and
they do not rest until the impudent fellow is at last overthrown,
thus turning his warm place back to the public. And, rest assured,
he won't recover the position so easily. For as soon as one of
these creatures is forced to give up a position, he will try at once
to wedge his way into the 'waitingline' unless the hue and cry
raised by the others prevents him.
The consequence of all this is a terrifying turnover in the most
important offices and positions of such a state, a result which is
always harmful, but sometimes positively catastrophic. For it is
not only the simpleton and incompetent who will fall victim to
thus custom, but to an even greater extent the real leader, if Fate
somehow manages to put one in this place. As soon as this fact
has been recognized, a solid front will form against him,
especially if such a mind has not arisen from their own ranks, but
none the less dares to enter into this exalted society. For on
principle these gentry like to be among themselves and they hate
as a common enemy any brain which stands even slightly above
the zeros. And in this respect their instinct is as much sharper as
it is deficient in everything else.
The result will be a steadily expanding intellectual
impoverishment of the leading circles. The result for the nation
and the state, everyone can judge for himself, excepting in so far
as he himself is one of these kind of 'leaders.'
Old Austria possessed the parliamentary regime in its purest
form.
To be sure, the prime ministers were always appointed by the
Emperor and King, but this very appointment was nothing halt
the execution of the parliamentary will. The haggling and
bargaining for the individual portfolios represented Western
democracy of the first water. And the results corresponded to the
principles applied. Particularly the change of individual
personalities occurred in shorter and shorter terms, ultimately
becoming a veritable chase. In the same measure, the stature of
the ' statesmen ' steadily diminished until finally no one remained
but that type of parliamentary gangster whose statesmanship
could only be measured and recognized by their ability in pasting
together the coalitions of the moment; in other words, concluding
those pettiest of political bargains which alone demonstrate the
fitness of these representatives of the people for practical work.
Thus the Viennese school transmitted the best impressions in this
field.
But what attracted me no less was to compare the ability and
knowledge of these representatives of the people and the tasks
which awaited them. In this case, whether I liked it or not, I was
impelled to examine more closely the intellectual horizon of
these elect of the nations themselves, and in so doing, I could not
avoid giving the necessary attention to the processes which lead
to the discovery of these ornaments of our public life.
The way in which the real ability of these gentlemen was applied
and placed in the service of the fatherlandin other words, the
technical process of their activitywas also worthy of thorough
study and investigation.
The more determined I was to penetrate these inner conditions, to
study the personalities and material foundations with dauntless
and penetrating objectivity, the more deplorable became my total
picture of parliamentary life. Indeed, this is an advisable
procedure in dealing with an institution which, in the person of
its representatives, feels obliged to bring up ' objectivity ' in
every second sentence as the only proper basis for every
investigation and opinion. Investigate these gentlemen
themselves and the laws of their sordid existence, and you will be
amazed at the result.
There is no principle which, objectively considered, is as false a,s
that of parliamentarianism.
Here we may totally disregard the manner in which our fine
representatives of the people are chosen, how they arrive at their
office and their new dignity. That only the tiniest fraction of
them rise in fulfillment of a general desire, let alone a need, will
at once be apparent to anyone who realizes that the political
understanding of the broad masses is far from being highly
enough developed to arrive at definite general political views of
their own accord and seek out the suitable personalities.
The thing we designate by the word 'public opinion' rests only in
the smallest part on experience or knowledge which the
individual has acquired by hirnself, but rather on an idea which is
inspired by socalled 'enlightenment,' often of a highly persistent
and obtrusive type.
Just as a man's denominational orientation is the result of
upbringing, and only the religious need as such slumbers in his
soul, the political opinion of the masses represents nothing but
the final result of an incredibly tenacious and thorough
manipulation of their mind and soul.
By far the greatest share in their political 'education,' which in
this case is most aptly designated by the word 'propaganda,' falls
to the account of the press. It is foremost in performing this 'work
of enlightenment' and thus represents a sort of school for grown
ups. This instruction, however, is not in the hands of the state,
but in the claws of forces which are in part very inferior. In
Vienna as a very young man I had the best opportunity to
become acquainted with the owners and spiritual manufacturers
of this machine for educating the masses. At first I could not help
but be amazed at how short a time it took this great evil power
within the state to create a certain opinion even where it meant
totally falsifying profound desires and views which surely
existed among the public. In a few days a ridiculous episode had
become a significant state action, while, conversely, at the same
time, vital problems fell a prey to public oblivion, or rather were
simply filched from the memory and consciousness of the
masses.
Thus, in the course of a few weeks it was possible to conjure up
names out of the void, to associate them with incredible hopes on
the part of the broad public, even to give them a popularity which
the really great man often does not obtain his whole life long;
names which a month before no one had even seen or heard of,
while at the same time old and proved figures of political or other
public life, though in the best of health, simply died as far as
their fellow men were concemed, or were heaped with such vile
insults that their names soon threatened to become the symbol of
some definite act of infamy or villainy. We must study this vile
Jewish technique of emptying garbage pails full of the vilest
slanders and defamations from hundreds and hundreds of sources
at once, suddenly and as if by magic, on the clean garments of
honorable men, if we are fully to appreciate the entire menace
represented by these scoundrels of the press.
There is absolutely nothing one of these spiritual robberbarons
will not do to achieve his savory aims.
He will poke into the most secret family affairs and not rest until
his trufResearching instinct digs up some miserable incident
which is calculated to finish off the unfortunate victim. But if,
after the most careful sniffing, absolutely nothing is found, either
in the man's public or private life, one of these scoundrels simply
seizes on slander, in the firm conviction that despite a thousand
refutations something always sticks and, moreover, through the
immediate and hundredfold repetition of his defamations by all
his accomplices, any resistance on the part of the victim is in
most cases utterly impossible; and it must be borne in mind that
this rabble never acts out of motives which might seem credible
or even understandable to the rest of humanity. God forbid!
While one of these scum is attacking his beloved fellow men in
the most contemptible fashion, the octopus covers himself with a
veritable cloud of respectability and unctuous phrases, prates
about ' journalistic duty ' and suchlike lies, and even goes so far
as to shoot off his mouth at committee meetings and congresses
that is, occasions where these pests are present in large numbers
about a very special variety of 'honor,' to wit, the journalistic
variety, which the assembled rabble gravely and mutually
confirm.
These scum manufacture more than three quarters of the so
called 'public opinion,' from whose foam the parliamentarian
Aphrodite arises. To give an accurate description of this process
and depict it in all its falsehood and improbability, one would
have to write volumes. But even if we disregard all this and
examine only the given product along with its activity, this seems
to me enough to make the objective lunacy of this institution
dawn on even the naivest mind.
This human error, as senseless as it is dangerous, will most
readily be understood as soon as we compare democratic
parliamentarianism with a truly Germanic democracy.
The distinguishing feature of the former is that a body of, let us
say five hundred men, or in recent times even women, is chosen
and entrusted with making the ultimate decision in any and all
matters. And so for practical purposes they alone are the
government; for even if they do choose a cabinet which
undertakes the external direction of the affairs of state, this is a
mere sham. In reality this socalled government cannot take a
step without first obtaining the approval of the general assembly.
Consequently, it cannot be made responsible for anything, since
the ultimate decision never lies with it, but with the majority of
parliament. In every case it does nothing but carry out the
momentary will of the majority. Its political ability can only be
judged according to the skill with which it understands how
either to adapt itself to the will of the majority or to pull the
majority over to its side. Thereby it sinks from the heights of real
government to the level of a beggar confronting the momentary
majority. Indeed, its most urgent task becomes nothing more than
either to secure the favor of the existing majority, as the need
arises, or to form a majority with more friendly inclinations. If
this succeeds, it may 'govern' a little while longer; if it doesn't
succeed, it can resign. The soundness of its purposes as such is
beside the point.
For practical purposes, this excludes all responsibility To what
consequences this leads can be seen from a few simple
considerations:
The internal composition of the five hundred chosen
representatives of the people, with regard to profession or even
individual abilities, gives a picture as incoherent as it is usually
deplorable. For no one can believe that these men elected by the
nation are elect of spirit or even of intelligence ! It is to be hoped
that no one will suppose that the ballots of an electorate which is
anything else than brilliant will give rise to statesmen by the
hundreds. Altogether we cannot be too sharp in condemning the
absurd notion that geniuses can be born from general elections.
In the first place, a nation only produces a real statesman once in
a blue moon and not a hundred or more at once; and in the
second place, the revulsion of the masses for every outstanding
genius is positively instinctive. Sooner will a camel pass through
a needle's eye than a great man be ' discovered' by an election.
In world history the man who really rises above the norm of the
broad average usually announces himself personally.
As it is, however, five hundred men, whose stature is to say the
least modest, vote on the most important affairs of the nation,
appoint governments which in every single case and in every
special question have to get the approval of the exalted assembly,
so that policy is really made by five hundred.
And that is just what it usually looks like.
But even leaving the genius of these representatives of the people
aside, bear in mind how varied are the problems awaiting
attention, in what widely removed fields solutions and decisions
must be made, and you will realize how inadequate a governing
institution must be which transfers the ultimate right of decision
to a mass assembly of people, only a tiny fraction of which
possess knowledge and experience of the matter to be treated.
The most important economic measures are thus submitted to a
forum, only a tenth of whose members have any economic
education to show. This is nothing more nor less than placing the
ultimate decision in a matter in the hands of men totally lacking
in every prerequisite for the task.
The same is true of every other question. The decision is always
made by a majority of ignoramuses and incompetents, since the
composition of this institution remains unchanged while the
problems under treatment extend to nearly every province of
public life and would thereby presuppose a constant turnover in
the deputies who are to judge and decide on them, since it is
impossible to let the same persons decide matters of
transportation as, let us say, a question of high for eign policy.
Otherwise these men would all have to be universal geniuses
such as we actually seldom encounter once in centuries.
Unfortunately we are here confronted, for the most part, not with
'thinkers,' but with dilettantes as limited as they are conceited and
infiated, intellectual demimonde of the worst sort. And this is the
source of the often incomprehensible frivolity with which these
gentry speak and decide on things which would require careful
meditation even in the greatest minds. Measures of the gravest
significance for the future of a whole state, yes, of a nation, are
passed as though a game of schafDopf or tarock,l which would
certainly be better suited to their abilities, lay on the table before
them and not the fate of a race.
Yet it would surely be unjust to believe that all of the deputies in
such a parliament were personally endowed with so little sense of
responsibility.
No, by no means.
But by forcing the individual to take a position on such questions
completely illsuited to him, this system gradually ruins hus
character. No one will summon up the courage to declare:
Gentlemen, I believe we understand nothing about this matter I
personally certainly do not.' (Besides, this would change mat ters
little, for surely this kind of honesty would remain totally
unappreciated, and what is more, our friends would scarcely
allow one honorable jackass to spoil their whole game.) Anyone
with a knowledge of people will realize that in such an illustrious
company no one is eager to be the stupidest, and in certain circles
honesty is almost synonymous with stupidity Thus, even the
representative who at first was honest is thrown end page 89
Page 90 into this track of general falsehood and deceit. The very
conviction that the nonparticipation of an individual in the
business would in itself change nothing kills every honorable
impulse which may rise up in this or that deputy. And finally,
moreover, he may tell himself that he personally is far from
being the worst among the others, and that the sole effect of his
collaboration is perhaps to prevent worse things from happening.
It will be objected, to be sure, that. though the individual deputy
possesses no special understanding in this or that matter, his
position has been discussed by the fraction which directs the
policy of the gentleman in question, and that the fraction has its
special committees which are more than adequately enlightened
by experts anyway.
At first glance this seems to be true. But then the question arises:
Why are five hundred chosen when only a few possess the
necessary wisdom to take a position in the most important
matters?
And this is the worm in the apple!
It is not the aim of our presentday parliamentarianism to
constitute an assembly of wise men, but rather to compose a band
of mentally dependent nonentities who are the more easily led in
certain directions, the greater is the personal limitation of the
individual. That is the only way of carrying on party politics in
the malodorous presentday sense. And only in this way is it
possible for the real wirepuller to remain carefully in the
background and never personally be called to responsibility. For
then every decision, regardless how harmful to the nation, will
not be set to the account of a scoundrel visible to all, but will be
unloaded on the shoulders of a whole fraction.
And thereby every practical responsibility vanishes. For
responsibility can lie only in the obligation of an individual and
not in a parliamentary bull session.
Such an institution can only please the biggest liars and sneaks of
the sort that shun the light of day, because it is inevitably hateful
to an honorable, straightforward man who welcomes personal
responsibility.
And that is why this type of democracy has become the
instrument of that race which in its inner goals must shun the
light of day, now and in all ages of the future. Only the Jew can
praise an institution which is as dirty and false as he himself.
Juxtaposed to this is the truly Germanic democracy characterized
by the free election of a leader and his obligation fully to assume
all responsibility for his actions and omissions. In it there is no
majority vote on individual questions, but only the decision of an
individual who must answer with his fortune and his life for his
choice.
If it be objected that under such conditions scarcely anyone
would be prepared to dedicate his person to so risky a task, there
is but one possible answer:
Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any
old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to
govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of
the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are
frightened off.
But if, nevertheless, one of these scoundrels should attempt to
sneak in, we can find him more easily, and mercilessly challenge
him: Out, cowardly scoundrel! Remove your foot, you are
besmirching the steps; the front steps of the Pantheon of history
are not for sneakthieves, but for heroes!
I had fought my way to this conclusion after two years
attendance at the Vienna parliament.
After that I never went back.
The parliamentary regime shared the chief blame for the
weakness, constantly increasing in the past few years, of the
Habsburg state. The more its activities broke the predominance
of the Germans, the more the country succumbed to a system of
playing off the nationalities against one another. In the Reichsrat
itself this was always done at the expense of the Germans and
thereby, in the last analysis, at the expense of the Empire; for by
the turn of the century it must have been apparent even to the
simplest that the monarchy's force of attraction would no longer
be able to withstand the separatist tendencies of the provinces.
On the contrary.
The more pathetic became the means which the state had to
employ for its preservation, the more the general contempt for it
increased. Not only in Hungary, but also in the separate Slavic
provinces, people began to identify themselves so little with the
common monarchy that they did not regard its weakness as their
own disgrace. On the contrary, they rejoiced at such symptoms of
old age; for they hoped more for the Empire's death than for its
recovery.
In parliament, for the moment, total collapse was averted by
undignified submissiveness and acquiescence at every extortion,
for which the German had to pay in the end; and in the country,
by most skillfully playing off the different peoples against each
other. But the general line of development was nevertheless
directed against the Germans. Especially since Archduke Francis
Ferdinand became heir apparent and began to enjoy a certain
influence, there began to be some plan and order in the policy of
Czechization from above. With all possible means, this future
ruler of the dual monarchy tried to encourage a policy of
deGermanization, to advance it himself or at least to sanction it.
Purely German towns, indirectly through government official
dom, were slowly but steadily pushed into the mixedlanguage
danger zones. Even in Lower Austria this process began to make
increasingly rapid progress, and many Czechs considered Vienna
their largest city.
The central idea of this new Habsburg, whose family had ceased
to speak anything but Czech (the Archduke's wife, a former
Czech countess, had been morganatically married to the Prince
she came from circles whose antiGerman attitude was
traditional), was gradually to establish a Slavic state in Central
Europe which for defense against Orthodox Russia should be
placed on a strictly Catholic basis. Thus, as the Habsburgs had so
often done before, religion was once again put into the service of
a purely political idea, and what was worseat least from the
German viewpointof a catastrophic idea.
The result was more than dismal in many respects. Neither the
House of Habsburg nor the Catholic Church received the
expected reward.
Habsburg lost the throne, Rome a great state.
For by employing religious forces in the service of its political
considerations, the crown aroused a spirit which at the outset it
had not considered possible.
In answer to the attempt to exterminate the Germans in the old
monarchy by every possible means, there arose the PanGerman
movement in Austria.
By the eighties the basic Jewish tendency of Manchester
liberalism had reached, if not passed, its high point in the
monarchy. The reaction to it, however, as with everything in old
Austria, arose primarily from a social, not from a national
standpoint. The instinct of selfpreservation forced the Germans
to adopt the sharpest measures of defense. Only secondarily did
economic considerations begin to assume a decisive influence.
And so, two party formations grew out of the general political
confusion, the one with the more national, the other with the
more social, attitude, but both highly interesting and instructive
for the future.
After the depressing end of the War of 1866, the House of
Habsburg harbored the idea of revenge on the battlefield. Only
the death of Emperor Max of Mexico, whose unfortunate
expedition was blamed primarily on Napoleon III and whose
abandonment by the French aroused general indignation,
prevented a closer collaboration with France. Habsburg
nevertheless lurked in wait. If the War of 187071 had not been
so unique a triumph, the Vienna Court would probably have
risked a bloody venture to avenge Sadowa. But when the first
amazing and scarcely credible, but none the less true, tales of
heroism arrived from the battlefields, the 'wisest' of all monarchs
recognized that the hour was not propitious and put the best
possible face on a bad business.
But the heroic struggle of these years had accomplished an even
mightier miracle; for with the Habsburgs a change of position
never arose from the urge of the innermost heart, but from the
compulsion of circumstances. However, the German people of
the old Ostmark were swept along by the Reich's frenzy of
victory, and looked on with deep emotion as the dream of their
fathers was resurrected to glorious reality.
For make no mistake: the truly Germanminded Austrian had,
even at Koniggratz, and from this time on, recognized the tragic
but necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of a Reich which
would no longer beand actually was notafflicted with the foul
morass of the old Union. Above all, he had come to understand
thoroughly, by his own suffering, that the House of Habsburg
had at last concluded its historical mission and that the new
Reich could choose as Emperor only him whose heroic
convictions made him worthy to bear the 'Crown of the Rhine.'
But how much more was Fate to be praised for accomplishing
this investiture in the scion of a house which in Frederick the
Great had given the nation a gleaming and eternal symbol of its
resurrection.
But when after the great war the House of Habsburg began with
desperate determination slowly but inexorably to exterminate the
dangerous German element in the dual monarchy (the inner
convictions of this element could not be held in doubt), for such
would be the inevitable result of the Slavization policy the
doomed people rose to a resistance such as modern German
history had never seen.
For the first time, men of national and patriotic mind became
rebels.
Rebels, not against the nation and not against the state as such,
but rebels against a kind of government which in their conviction
would inevitably lead to the destruction of their own nationality.
For the first time in modern German history, traditional dynastic
patriotism parted ways with the national love of fatherland and
people.
The PanGerman movement in GermanAustria in the nineties is
to be praised for demonstrating in clear, unmistakable terms that
a state authority is entitled to demand respect and protection only
when it meets the interests of a people, or at least does not harm
them.
There can be no such thing as state authority as an end in itself,
for, if there were, every tyranny in this world would be
unassailable and sacred.
If, by the instrument of governmental power, a nationality is led
toward its destruction, then rebellion is not only the right of
every member of such a peopleit is his duty.
And the questionwhen is this the case?is decided not by
theoretical dissertations, but by force andresults.
Since, as a matter of course, all governmental power claims the
duty of preserving state authorityregardless how vicious it is,
betraying the interests of a people a thousandfoldthe national
instinct of selfpreservation, in overthrowing such a power and
achieving freedom or independence, will have to employ the
same weapons by means of which the enemy tries to maintain his
power. Consequently, the struggle will be carried on with 'legal'
means as long as the power to be overthrown employs such
means; but it will not shun illegal means if the oppressor uses
them.
In general it should not be forgotten that the highest aim of
human existence is not the preservation of a state, let alone a
government, but the preservation of the species.
And if the species itself is in danger of being oppressed or utterly
eliminated, the question of legality is reduced to a subordinate
role. Then, even if the methods of the ruling power are alleged to
be legal a thousand times over, nonetheless the oppressed
people's instinct of selfpreservation remains the loftiest
justification of their struggle with every weapon.
Only through recognition of this principle have wars of liberation
against internal and external enslavement of nations on this earth
come down to us in such majestic historical examples.
Human law cancels out state law.
And if a people is defeated in its struggle for human rights, this
merely means that it has been found too light in the scale of
destiny for the happiness of survival on this earth. For when a
people is not willing or able to fight for its existence Providence
in its eternal justice has decreed that people's end.
The world is not for cowardly peoples.
How easy it is for a tyranny to cover itself with the cloak of so
called 'legality' is shown most clearly and penetratingly by the
example of Austria.
The legal state power in those days was rooted in the antiGerman
soil of parliament with its nonGerman majorities and in the
equally antiGerman ruling house. In these two factors the entire
state authority was embodied. Any attempt to change the
destinies of the GermanAustrian people from this position was
absurd. Hence, in the opinions of our friends the worshipers of
state authority as such and of the 'legal' way, all resistance would
have had to be shunned, as incompatible with legal methods. But
this, with compelling necessity, would have meant the end of the
German people in the monarchyand in a very short time. And, as
a matter of fact, the Germans were saved from this fate only by
the collapse of this state.
The bespectacled theoretician, it is true, would still prefer to die
for his doctrine than for his people.
Since it is men who make the laws, he believes that they live for
the sake of these laws.
The PanGerman movement in Austria had the merit of
completely doing away with this nonsense, to the horror of all
theoretical pedants and other fetishworshiping isolationists in
the government.
Since the Habsburgs attempted to attack Germanism with all
possible means, this party attacked the 'exalted' ruling house
itself, and without mercy. For the first time it probed into this
rotten state and opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands. To its
credit be it said that it released the glorious concept of love of
fatherland from the embrace of this sorry dynasty.
In the early days of its appearance, its following was extremely
great, threatening to become a veritable avalanche. But the
success did not last. When I came to Vienna, the movement had
long been overshadowed by the Christian Social Party which had
meanwhile attained powerand had indeed been reduced to
almost complete insignificance.
This whole process of the growth and passing of the PanGerman
movement on the one hand, and the unprecedented rise of the
Christian Social Party on the other, was to assume the deepest
significance for me as a classical object of study.
When I came to Vienna, my sympathies were fully and wholly
on the side of the PanGerman tendency.
That they mustered the courage to cry 'Loch Hohenzollern'
impressed me as much as it pleased me; that they still regarded
themselves as an only temporarily severed part of the German
Reich, and never let a moment pass without openly attesting this
fact, inspired me with joyful confidence; that in all questions
regarding Germanism they showed their colors without reserve,
and never descended to compromises, seemed to me the one still
passable road to the salvation of our people; and I could not
understand how after its so magnificent rise the movement
should have taken such a sharp decline. Even less could I
understand how the Christian Social Party at this same period
could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just
reached the apogee of its glory.
As I set about comparing these movements, Fate, accelerated by
my otherwise sad situation, gave me the best instruction for an
understanding of the causes of this riddle.
I shall begin my comparisons with the two men who may be
regarded as the leaders and founders of the two parties: Georg
von Schonerer and Dr. Karl Lueger.
From a purely human standpoint they both tower far above the
scope and stature of socalled parliamentary figures. Amid the
morass of general political corruption their whole life remained
pure and unassailable. Nevertheless my personal sympathy lay at
first on the side of the PanGerman Schonerer, and turned only
little by little toward the Christian Social leader as well.
Compared as to abilities, Schonerer seemed to me even then the
better and more profound thinker in questions of principle. He
foresaw the inevitable end of the Austrian state more clearly and
correctly than anyone else. If, especially in the Reich, people had
paid more attention to his warnings against the Habsburg
monarchy, the calamity of Germany's World War against all
Europe would never have occurred.
But if Schonerer recognized the problems in their innermost
essence, he erred when it came to men.
Here, on the other hand, lay Dr. Lueger's strength.
He had a rare knowledge of men and in particular took good care
not to consider people better than they are. Consequently, he
reckoned more with the real possibilities of life while Schonerer
had but little understanding for them. Theoretically speaking, all
the PanGerman's thoughts were correct, but since he lacked the
force and astuteness to transmit his theoretical knowledge to the
massesthat is, to put it in a form suited to the receptivity of the
broad masses, which is and remains exceedingly limitedall his
knowledge was visionary wisdom, and could never become
practical reality.
And this lack of actual knowledge of men led in the course of
time to an error in estimating the strength of whole movements
as well as ageold institutions.
Finally, Schonerer realized, to be sure, that questions of basic
philosophy were involved, but he did not understand that only
the broad masses of a people are primarily able to uphold such
wellnigh religious convictions.
Unfortunately, he saw only to a limited extent the extraordinary
limitation of the will to fight in socalled 'bourgeois' circles, due,
if nothing else, to their economic position which makes the
individual fear to lose too much and thereby holds him in check.
And yet, on the whole, a philosophy can hope for victory only if
the broad masses adhere to the new doctrine and declare their
readiness to undertake the necessary struggle.
From this deficient understanding of the importance of the lower
strata of the people arose a completely inadequate conception of
the social question.
In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of Schonerer.
His thorough knowledge of men enabled him to judge the
possible forces correctly, at the same time preserving him from
underestimating existing institutions, and perhaps for this very
reason taught him to make use of these institutions as instruments
for the achievement of his purposes.
He understood only too well that the political fighting power of
the upper bourgeoisie at the present time was but slight and
inadequate for achieving the victory of a great movement. He
therefore laid the greatest stress in his political activity on
winning over the classes whose existence was threatened and
therefore tended to spur rather than paralyze the will to fight.
Likewise he was inclined to make use of all existing implements
of power, to incline mighty existing institutions in his favor,
drawing from these old sources of power the greatest possible
profit for his own movement.
Thus he adjusted his new party primarily to the middle class
menaced with destruction, and thereby assured himself of a
following that was difficult to shake, whose spirit of sacrifice
was as great as its fighting power. His policy toward the Catholic
Church, fashioned with infinite shrewdness, in a short time won
over the younger clergy to such an extent that the old Clerical
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